Alfred Lion
}} Alfred Lion (April 21, 1908 – February 2, 1987) was a Jewish German-born American record executive who co-founded Blue Note Records in 1939http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1339880 "It's a bit of an irony that the Blue Note label — synonymous with jazz, the seminal American music form — was created by two German immigrants. In Blue Note Records, The Biography, author Richard Cook tells the story of Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, who formed the label in 1939.". Blue Note recorded many of the biggest names in jazz throughout the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. Early Years Alfred Lion, born in Berlin, began his lifelong fascination with jazz at the age of 16. In 1925, he noticed a concert poster for Sam Wooding's Orchestra on the way to his favorite Berlin ice-skating arena. His mother played jazz records and Lion began to take an interest in the music. That night his life was changed when he went to Wooding's jazz concert. In 1928 Alfred Lion migrated to the United States where he worked on the docks and slept in Central Park to get closer to the music, but a physical attack necessitated more serious hospital treatment, and he was forced to return to Germany. In 1933, Lion was based in South America, working for German import-export companies, only returning to New York in 1938. The Birth of Blue Note Records |Alfred Lion Alfred Lion,BlueNote History,BlueNote.com}} On December 23 of that year, Lion attended the celebrated From Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall. The power, soul and beauty of boogie woogie piano masters Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis rocked the stage. It gripped Lion as well, inspiring him to start his own record label. Max Margulis, a communist writer, photographer, and member of the avant-garde arts scene, ironically supplied the start-up capital for this unusual capitalist venture into recording what was called "hot jazz" at the time, the precusor to BeBop Exactly two weeks later, on January 6 at 2 p.m. in the afternoon, Lion brought both Pianists into a studio to record an album. They took turns at the one piano, recording four solos each before relinquishing the bench to the other man. The long session ended with two stunning duets. Blue Note Records was born. The company's first hit, recorded in 1939, was Sidney Bechet's recording of "Summertime". It was notable for being issued on a 12" 78rpm record instead of the then standard 10" owing to its length. Childhood Friendship to Life-Long Partnership At the end of 1939, Lion's childhood friend Francis Wolff caught the last boat out of Nazi-controlled Germany bound for America. Wolff found employment at a photographic studio and joined forces with Lion, producing albums at night to develop Blue Note's recordings of "hot jazz and their swingtet phase. Lion was drafted into the U.S. Army. Under the wing of Milt Gabler and his Commodore Music Store, Wolff sustained the business in Lion's absence. Margulis, who had no particular interest in being a record producer, had dropped out of any major involvement with Blue Note. In the late 1940s, jazz had changed again, and Lion and Wolff could no longer resist the Be-Bop movement. Quebec Influence : Their close friend, Saxophonist Ike Quebec became an adviser to Blue Note, and eventually became their first Artist and Repertoire (A&R) man. : Just Quebec had introduced Lion and Wolff to swingtet, he brought them into modern jazz, encouraging the producers to record many of the most avant-garde musicians of the day on their terms. : Quebec brought the biggest names in Jazz to Wolf's door, and, once he had them there, Lion treated them like the stars of the genre that they were. Developing a Powerhouse Stable of Performers Lion was able to attract performers by being flexible with late-night recording sessions, and providing the musicians who had finished club gigs with food, booze, and cigarettes to power up the pre-dawn recording sessions. He recorded established artists like Fats Navarro and Bud Powell. Tadd Dameron, Thelonious Monk, and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, among others, got their first albums as band leaders at Blue Note. Lion and Wolff not only embraced the music. They embraced the life around Jazz and its performers, and they became close friends and patrons of artists like Art Blakey and Monk. He and Wolff became especially fascinated with Monk. They helped his career in every possible manner, including standing behind many of his albums that met with serious critical resistance and poor sales. They recorded the man who would come to be regarded as one of the seminal geniuses of jazz music frequently until 1952. Establishing the Look and Feel of Modern Jazz Blue Note's achievements were not just in the range of the music. Lion hired Reid Miles a graphic designer working at Esquire Magazine, to design album covers for the label. It was controversial at that time to put African-American performers on the covers of labels. Huge artists like Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday had broken through those taboos, but black performers were still only seen in tuxedos, gowns, and posed in ways that were consistent with the sanitized album covers of the day. Blue Note albums and their covers were anything but sanitized. With artists like Art Blakey, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, or Thelonius Monk with his array of hats and glasses, Blue Note album covers broke the ground for what is the modern album cover today, which is art that can be almost anything. Lion and Wolff were instrumental in fostering that "look," a visual art grammar for modern jazz that became widely emulated, and gave a visual "cool" to the sound by making the records jump out in record stores. Lion and Wolff also hired graphic artists Paul Bacon, Gil Melle and John Hermansader who followed Reid's lead and extended the graphic design of Blue Note to give it a look that was both distinctive and captured the flavor of the music and the times. A Civil Rights Pioneer Lion was more than a record producer. He was a Civil Rights pioneer who used the avant-garde forms of Jazz to push the envelope of what a white America, which still frowned on all but the most sanitized views of African-American performers, listened to and watched. Lion put it out there, and didn't pander only to the African-American public. His "subversive" records found their way into specialized jazz shops that sprang up, and also into mainstream stores of white America as the youth of the 1950s found the musical voice of their generation's personal rebellion. New A&R Man Pushes Lion's Career Forward Duke Pearson, who Lion appointed after Quebec's death in 1963, helped to ensure that the label's roster remained fresh as a whole. In fact the popularity that Horace Silver's Song for My Father and Lee Morgan's The Sidewinder resulted in Lion being pressured by his distributors into producing more hits. Retirement Having suffered from heart problems for some years, Lion retired in 1967 having sold the Blue Note label and catalog to Liberty Records in 1965. Lion himself retired to Mexico with his second wife, the former Ruth Mason. He dropped out of any direct connection with Blue Note or his former life in the record business, although Horace Silver, who respected his privacy, remained in limited contact. Recognition Lion contacted the co-founder of Mosaic Records, Michael Cuscuna around 1984 having noticed that label's early CD box-sets of Blue Note recordings. At the end of his life, Lion gained the recognition he had often been denied, including visiting several Blue Note festivals in Japan. He died in San Diego. See also * Blue Note Records * Rudy Van Gelder *Category:Blue Note Records References Blue Note's involvement with modern jazz was not total for several years, and Lion continued his label's association with Bechet and clarinetist George Lewis into the 1950s. Wolff would supervise few sessions himself until after Lion's retirement, concentrating on the company's business affairs. What became known as the "hard bop" style would predominate in Blue Note's output during the 1950s and 1960's. Musicians like Art Blakey and Horace Silver, among others, epitomized this style. By the mid-1950's, Blue Note was a struggling label, hit by the record industry's changeover to the 12" LP format, but the popularity of the organ/soul jazz craze, driven by the innovative work of Jimmy Smith, ensured that the label survived. Blue Note also recorded avant-garde musicians like Andrew Hill and Cecil Taylor. Indeed it was Lion's discovery of Hill, which he would later cite, along with his earlier involvement with Thelonious Monk and their fellow pianist Herbie Nichols, as having given him particular pleasure during his career. References Sources * Michael Cuscuna, Michel Ruppli: The Blue Note label. A discography. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut 2001. * Colin Larkin: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Third edition. Macmillan, New York, N.Y. 1998. * Donald Clarke (Ed.): The Penguin encyclopedia of popular music. Viking, London 1989. * Barry Dean Kernfeld (Ed.): The new Grove dictionary of jazz. Macmillan Press, London 1988. * Alfred Lion - Wikipedia * Blue Note History - http://www.bluenote.com/History.aspx External links * Story of Blue Note's Beginning * Blue Note Records, The Biography Category:Blue Note Records Category:Record Producers Category:Berlin Births Category:Margulis,Max Category:BeBop Category:1939 Category:Wolff, Francis Category:Quebec, Ike Category:American Record Producers Category:1908 Births Category:1987 Deaths Category:Berlin Category:Blue Note Records Founders